Aaron Tracy

He's having actually these characters basically read out the story.

So in a way, they're almost like audiobooks that are coming to life.

And they're sort of, I keep thinking of them as pop-up books because they have a kind of like handcrafted sensibility to them.

Moving beyond Anderson, to me, the most interesting filmmaker who decided to tackle Dahl is Quentin Tarantino.

We'll hear what Manuel thinks about that collaboration in a second.

We already heard what David B. and Cooley thinks about it.

I think Quentin Tarantino is the biggest miss.

Yeah, that seems to be the consensus, which is really surprising.

Not only is Tarantino a first-ballot, Hall of Fame filmmaker, but he made his adaptation of Dahl's The Man from the South right when he was at the peak of his powers.

He made it directly after Pulp Fiction.

And at first glance, Tarantino would seem to be as perfect a compliment to Dahl as Hitchcock is.

Both Tarantino and Dahl write very stylized dialogue.

Both love dark humor.

Both revel in violent or grotesque story elements.

Both make ample use of unexpected violence, like what befalls the kids in Dahl's Chocolate Factory or poor Marvin in the backseat in Pulp Fiction.

Both writers poke fun at genre conventions.

and both really enjoy subverting audience expectations.

But Tarantino's movie just doesn't work.

He's adapting the same story that Hitchcock chose, the one about someone whose finger will be chopped off if he can't get a cigarette later to work ten times in a row.

And you can see why that setup would appeal to a guy like Tarantino, who made such a meal out of cutting off an ear in his first film.